When an employer checks references, the first place they are going to check with is your previous employer. However, not all companies provide references for employees. In fact, some companies may only confirm that you worked at the company and confirm your dates of employment.

Who to Ask for a Reference

That’s why it’s important to have a list of professional references, in addition to employment references, that you can provide to employers. Who should you ask to provide references? Supervisors and colleagues (if company policy permits) may be able to provide a reference for you.

Business contacts, customers, clients, vendors, and other individuals you have a professional relationship with can be used as references.

Professional vs. Personal References

In addition to professional references, personal references, also known as character references, can be used for employment purposes.

Neighbors and family friends may be willing to write a reference for you. Teachers, professors, academic advisors, volunteer leaders, coaches, can all provide personal references.

Are you looking for that next career challenge but unsure how to get there? Climbing the corporate ladder might not be the only way. Today more than ever, a career detour just might lead to your career destiny. At every level — including the top — professionals, managers, and executives-in-waiting commonly zigzag through several lateral lurches before stepping up to their destination position.

Why has lateral become the new way to the top? The recession is partly to blame — the hierarchy in many companies flattened and compressed during the recession, effectively eliminating rungs that were previously part of the expected climb.

Because of this reality, it has become more important to “think sideways.” If you don’t plan ahead by considering lateral rotations as part of your career development plan, you may end up stuck on your current ladder rung indefinitely, unless you find a way to take a larger-than-usual step up. Yet paradoxically, exceptional advancement is less likely if you haven’t taken the time to boost your experience and confidence with lateral moves.

Cheryl Palmer, career coach and founder of Call to Career, suggested a helpful analogy: “If you’re stuck in a traffic jam and it may be hours before you’re able to move forward, it makes sense to change lanes and exit on a side road where you can more quickly navigate around it. Sitting in the traffic jam and fuming doesn’t get you anywhere.”

For advice on how to effectively turn a side step into a step up, TheLadders asked several career-development experts to weigh in:

1. Make It Make Sense. Without a strategic career path, lateral moves can become merely a merry-go-round. Joanne Cleaver, author of the new book The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent, suggested you must proactively plot your own career plan to make sense of diagonal and lateral moves. “Your employer won’t do it for you, so the first thing to know is that it’s up to you to pursue and land opportunities that advance your career agenda,” said Cleaver.

A great place to start is to envision your next “up” move, and then reverse-engineer the qualifications you need to make a serious run for that position. Cleaver recommended assessing your current experience and skill set to determine what you might need to get where you want to go.

“Ask yourself: Am I lacking hands-on operational experience? Proven expertise in a business skill, such as client retention? A working knowledge of a relevant slice of technology? What skill set would tee up my success in that position?” suggested Cleaver. By comparing the skills required by your next-step job to the skills you currently have, you’ll quickly see the gaps that a lateral move can fill.

2. Do What Needs to Be Done. Your informal self-assessment will likely uncover areas where your skills could be stronger to get you to the next level. Determine specific strategic actions that will help you reach your career goals faster.

“If you are a project manager who wants to become a department manager, you might need two things: a stronger network outside your department so that your reputation is already established with your potential new peers, and broader exposure to customers and clients so you can show that you can drive growth as well as get work accomplished,” said Cleaver.

In this case, she suggested considering a short-term rotation to cultivate relationships with other departments and functions, or working on an assignment that puts you and your team on a customer-facing project.

3. Volunteer Strategically. It can be difficult to find time for volunteer projects in the midst of your primary career responsibilities. But strategic volunteering can be a powerful way to rapidly expand your network of influencers and to backfill business skills, according to Cleaver.

To spin community service into an opportunity for lateral rotation, Cleaver suggested joining an organizational committee whose volunteers complement—yet don’t duplicate—your existing network. Look to your current skills for a logical toehold (for example, if you work in marketing, join the marketing committee).

“Your end game is to transition to an assignment that builds your business skills, once your credibility is established,” explained Cleaver. “So a marketing exec, needing operational and financial management experience, might volunteer to co-chair an annual appeal.” Such assignments tee up results-driven case studies for employees to bring back to their day job, illustrating business skills that prove their qualification for general management.

The traditional view of careers looks something like a straight line that hopefully slopes in an upwards direction. Professionals seek to get more money and bigger jobs, year after year, until they just can’t do it any more.

But this is a model for a world that changed slower than ours does today. First Blockbuster and now Radio Shack are disappearing from retail strip malls… Kodak went from everywhere to nowhere… large public companies have all but stopped growing.

To top it all off, social media has changed the balance of power. Without even knowing each other, customers of a firm band together to ridicule their service, quality and prices. News travels in seconds. Social influence is even toppling entire governments today, so how can you expect your career path to still go in a straight line?

In this environment, you have to be flexible. Leave your expectations behind, and change as the world changes. The future belongs to the most flexible, not the strongest or smartest.

The problem, of course, is that no one knows how the future will evolve. That’s why I’ve been looking at a wide range of possible answers.

One out-of-the-box idea is that academic careers might serve as a new model for other types of careers. To illustrate, here’s a thought-provoking passage from a research paper by Yehuda Baruch:

…lateral and even downwards movement are accepted (e.g. when a Dean returns to serve as a Professor, conducting research and teaching, it is not considered “demotion”). Upwards mobility is limited, even not desired (becoming a Dean might take scholars off the research route)… Sabbaticals are part of the career. Perhaps more fundamental, the academic career model builds on networking within and across organizations.

The main reason this idea caught my attention is that while professors aren’t always known for their flexibility, they are expected to both conduct research and drive learning in their chosen field. This quest for knowledge should power your career as well.

Thinking of your career through the lens of this “academic” model might lead you to a much more interesting and robust career than you would get from employing a traditional corporate mindset.

For example, your goal might morph from trying to get promoted as often as possible to becoming a leading expert in your field. You might compare yourself to all experts in your field, instead of to all the managers in your department.

Sarah Stamboulie, a New York career consultant, had a young Japanese client whose work visa was due to expire in just six weeks. The man was determined to find work at a hedge fund that would allow him to stay in the U.S., but he spoke with a strong accent, his written English was poor, and he had made a weak impression at job interviews. Stamboulie, who has worked in human resources departments for both corporations and nonprofits, encouraged him to follow up with an interviewer at a Japan-based fund who had already turned him down. Impressed by the young man’s persistence, the hiring manager recommended him to another Japanese fund that had an opening. Stamboulie’s client got the job. “It was like a semi-hostile referral, but it worked,” she recalls.

Lesson learned: Following up on a job interview is crucial. Even if you blow the interview, it pays to get in touch after the fact.

Ideally your interviews always go smoothly, and after each one you craft an effective note thanking the interviewer for the time, expressing enthusiasm and making it clear you listened closely to the hirer’s requirements. “The follow-up letter is almost like a proposal letter,” Stamboulie says. You should tailor it to the company and suggest specific ways you can address the needs you discussed when you met.

Roy Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide: Success Secrets of a Career Coach, agrees that a follow-up note should always focus on what the hiring manager’s looking for. “You should say, ‘I listened, I understand your needs and your challenges, and here’s how I can help you address those,’” he says. Concisely remind the interviewer of what you’ve accomplished in the past, and make a couple of concrete suggestions for how you can help the company.

Do send the follow-up note as soon as possible. “If you don’t, someone else may send a message more quickly,” Cohen advises. If you don’t have time to craft a longer note, consider sending a short thank-you immediately, mentioning that you want to give further thought to the challenges you discussed and promising to send a more in-depth message soon.

Do send e-mails rather than handwritten notes, Stamboulie and Cohen agree. “People say that snail mail stands out, but it stands out for the wrong reason,” Cohen says. “It will make you look like a dinosaur.”

If you’ve met with more than one person in the interview process, think about what will make for an appropriate note to each, Cohen advises. For instance, if you interviewed with someone who would be reporting to you if you get the job, you can say something like, “It sounds like you’re working on some interesting projects. It would be great to have you as a colleague.”